Real Madrid seeks new momentum against the bottom European club
MADRID, 23 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Real Madrid will seek this Thursday (7:00 p.m.) to forget the disappointment of the Copa del Rey in Granada as soon as possible and focus on gaining momentum again in the 2021-2022 Euroleague Regular Phase, taking advantage of the visit to bottom team Zalgiris Kaunas.
The Madrid team could not be crowned cup champion after losing again to Barça, who defeated them for the third consecutive time in just one month, but now, again without time to heal their wounds, they must return to the continental challenge and again within a demanding schedule.
The first objective for the ten-time European champion is to get back on the path to victory in this Euroleague where he is in second place with 20-5, tied with Sarunas Jasikevicius’ team. Before facing the knockout tournament, Pablo Laso’s men had parked the European competition with the bitter taste of two tough defeats that had stopped their great moment of nine consecutive victories in their tracks.
Thus, Real Madrid did not leave its best image at an offensive level in the postponed visit to Fenerbahce (66-51) and the second Clásico of this Regular Phase (68-86) and will try to remain firm in the fight for the first two places in Kaunas, where the last classified awaits him, also wanting to vindicate himself.
Laso left reasonably happy with his team’s performance in the Copa del Rey, where he once again made it clear that right now the defense is working better than the attack, but he is concerned about the physical problems he is suffering again. Before traveling to Granada, he lost Carlos Alocén for the entire season and there he was left without Fabien Causeur, although the good news is that Adam Hanga was left in a scare and he will not be absent for this next commitment that opens a 12-game schedule in 36 days. Yes, Rudy Fernández will miss it.
Despite these absences, the Madrid team has a lot of wardrobe with which they aspire to add their twenty-first win that will help them start another good streak in the key stretch of the campaign and keep them away from their pursuers to have the ‘factor court’ in the ‘playoffs’.
They will face a rival, in theory affordable due to their position in the table and for what they have offered this season, but with the heat of the imposing Zalgirio Arena and after leaving injuries behind, they hope to make things complicated.
The Lithuanian team has only added four wins, all of them in their pavilion, where Baskonia, Fenerbahce and Panathinaikos have lost, while the other was precisely in their last match, on February 10, in Monaco, with which they broke a dynamic nine straight losses.
DATASHEET.
–EQUIPMENT.
ZALGIRIS KAUNAS: Webster, Ulanovas, Lukosiunas, Cavanaugh y Lauvergne – posible quinteto inicial– Nebo, Blazevic, Giffey, Lekavicius, Milaknis, Strelnieks, Kalnietis, Miniotas y Jankunas.
REAL MADRID: Heurtel, Abalde, Deck, Yabusele and Tavares –possible initial quintet–, Williams-Goss, Taylor, Randolph, Poirier, Llull, Thompkins, Hanga and Núñez.
– ARBITROS: Mogulkoc, Nikolic and Dragojevic.
–PAVILLION: Zalgirio Arena.